Nuclear test takes heat out of territorial dispute

Xi Jinping
was out doing good deeds. The incoming Chinese president braved the Beijing cold earlier in the week to deliver Lunar New Year greetings to everyone from taxi drivers to toilet cleaners. He even put on a hard hat to pass on his festive wishes to workers building a new subway line in the capital.

Then North Korea exploded a nuclear device and Xi’s peaceful week of grassroots politics ended abruptly. Foreign policy is now back near the top his agenda at a time when the incoming president is looking to push ambitious economic reforms at home.

Perversely, however, Pyongyang’s attention-grabbing antics may actually take the heat out of China’s other pressing foreign policy issue – territorial disputes with Japan.

In recent weeks, tensions between China and Japan looked to be getting out of control – a little scary even.

North Korea’s detonation should allow both sides to turn down the dial on the disputed islands in the East China Sea. Call it an intermission.

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This lack of a break has been part of the reason there has been a small but significant escalation in the dispute every week for the past six months.

The most significant of these escalations was made public last week when a Chinese frigate allegedly locked its weapons targeting radar on a Japanese ship. The Chinese government has denied the claim, prompting Japan to say it may release evidence of the incident.

“The government is considering the extent of what can be disclosed," said Itsunori Onodera, Japan’s Defence Minister.

That was on Saturday morning and there has been no response or counter-claim from the Chinese.

Now the issue has been over-shadowed by North Korea, but it will be most interesting to see if Beijing chooses to pick it up again.

Given the heat has gone out of the issue, there is no need to continue the back and forth.

But if China’s Foreign Ministry decides to re-engage and turn the dial back up, it suggests Beijing wants to keep this dispute at least luke warm.

The theory is that China needs tensions to be high in order to force Japan to the negotiating table.

At present Tokyo’s position is that there is nothing to talk about. It maintains that the uninhabited islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are Tokyo’s and there is nothing disputed about them. “The gradual ratcheting up of the pressure and risk taking by China is about getting the Japanese to acknowledge the islands are in fact disputed territory," says Rory Medcalf from Lowy Institute for International Policy. “They are testing to see how far they can push the Japanese." While the latest flare-up in the dispute was triggered by Tokyo’s decision to buy the islands from private owners in September, Medcalf says it is the Chinese who are taking all the risks at sea and escalating the dispute.

“The problem is that both sides have got into a spiral of tough talk," he says.

This has significantly increased the risks involved and is why the dispute will still be among the top problems confronting new United States Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry, like his predecessor Hillary Clinton, will certainly be told to stay out of the dispute. That won’t happen. The issue for the US is that China clearly needs raise the tension in order to get its desired outcome.

That appears to be the reason why China has rejected the idea of a “red phone" between Tokyo and Beijing, which could be used if an incident looked to be escalating out of control.

It does not appear to be in China’s interest to de-risk the dispute as the threat of conflict is perhaps the only way Japan will be forced to change its position.

Defence Minister Onodera once again renewed this offer on Saturday. “We would be able to communicate swiftly when this kind of incident happens," he said of China’s alleged use of weapons targeting radar on January 19 and January 30.

For China, the dispute is also about marking its re-emergence as a maritime power and an increasingly assertive player in the region.

The prospect of potential oil and gas reserves around the islands appears to be a third-tier consideration.

But if you put nationalism, the need to project force and a potential source of oil together, you have a dispute where it’s hard to see a resolution – unless another, more pressing problem arises.